Steven Spielberg said four words in a 1985 Time Magazine interview that have stuck around for 40 years.

"I dream for a living."

We're pretty romantic about the director and his work around here, as his films have played as a backdrop to our lives, particularly the early stuff— _Jaws_ , _E.T._ , _Close Encounters_. Now, with _Disclosure Day_ nearing release, we're thinking about his career…

Let's start with a hard truth: anyone who promises you they have the secret key to sell a screenplay is full of sh*t. If you could sell scripts that easily, you'd be doing that, not writing blogs online.

Selling anything nowadays is hard. Fewer specs get set up each year, but it's still worth writing them because they can lead to other work.

But there are certain things you can write that…

A few years ago, my wife gave me a tin of old pulp magazines for my birthday. I gobbled up old stories and shorts that had lots of cool storytelling devices and ideas inside them.

For those who don't know, here's a little history: In the early 20th century, a "golden age" of writing flourished through pulp magazines. They were for the cheap paper they were printed on, and these publications…